


From Heart-Break Comes Art

by StrawberryBubbles



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Divorce, F/M, M/M, small mention of abuse, small mention of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 13:18:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrawberryBubbles/pseuds/StrawberryBubbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire gets upset when two people he loves get divorced, so he makes a wedding dress out of divorce papers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Heart-Break Comes Art

**Author's Note:**

> Based off this post on tumblr http://subenjolras.tumblr.com/post/61188131159/those-barricade-boys-les-dorks-de-labc

Grantaire was used to heart-break, it was something that seemed to fill his life. Not only his own heart-break but that of everyone around him. He had watched as his parents’ marriage had fallen apart. Watched as his mum and step-fathers’ marriage dissolved. Saw his friends date and break up, barely dated himself but still somehow managed to get his heart broken. He was used to it by now. Heart break was just a thing that happened, you couldn’t change it, couldn’t stop it, just had to try and make the most of the good times, or as he was want to do, just ignore it all.

 

Because he was used to it he didn’t really think anything could shake him that was of course until he went to visit his old art teacher during the holidays.

 

Mrs Simpson, Elaine, had always been his favourite teacher. It wasn’t just that she taught his favourite subject, and it wasn’t just that she was one of the few people who had ever actually given him any kind of praise, it was more just who she was.

 

She was quiet and shy and would hide behind curtains of mousy brown hair, light pink cardigans and soft spoken words, but her art, her art was so powerful. She would paint with dark reds and blacks and create these tortured pieces that forced the viewer to remember some of their own pain. Or bright yellows and greens that would merge together to make a scene full of life and joy, she would create these pieces that made the viewer feel something, be it happy or sad, her work was emotive. It was as though she wasn’t a person except through her art. Or at least that is what Grantaire had first thought when he met her and after he had seen her art, but that changed over the time he knew her.

 

He would spend hour upon hour in the studio with her. He’d be there before school and after, during his own class with her and during her other classes. He knew she knew he was supposed to be in other lessons, but as long as he took a break every once and a while to work on his other work she didn’t seem to mind that he would skip class to work in the studio. And while he was there, they would talk.

 

She told him about her travels around the world as a student, her childhood growing up and her first serious relationship, an abusive relationship that left her with scars, both physical and mental. In response he told her about where he wanted to go, what he wanted to do with his life, told her about his childhood with a mother who shouted and a father who drank, an older sister who left home as soon as she could and a younger one who died of cancer. They would talk about anything and everything, art, politics, history, and her husband.

 

She loved her husband, Greg, and Grantaire loved him because when Elaine talked about him she became her art, she was filled with more life than at any other time. It became clear over time that he loved her too. He would bring them both dinner if they stayed late in the studio, he would tell Grantaire stories with a soft look in his eyes, and smile in way Grantaire thought only existed in stories.

 

They were perfect together, something Grantaire saw more and more over the years he spent as her student. It got to a point where they basically adopted him, they had no children, and he had parents who liked to pretend they didn’t have children. So he would go to their house for diners, they would sometimes take him out to the theatre and have picnics on beaches and basically just act like a family.

 

They were the one thing, before he met Enjolras that Grantaire believed in. They were so perfect together, so happy, he knew despite the heart-ache that filled the world, they would be different, and they would make it through right until the end.

 

He had been wrong.

 

He hadn’t really picked up on it at first, he had been so busy at university, with Les Amis, with Enjolras, to really pay that much attention to his old life, something he now kicked himself for, but he didn’t really have anything to look back on, besides Elaine and Greg. He did try to keep in contact with letters and emails, he and Elaine would send each other their art, they would talk on the phone and every holiday he would go home and spend most of his time with them. If he had started to notice distance between them he had done so subconsciously and then decided to ignore it and not let his consciousness know. So when he came back towards the end of his second year and Elaine sat him down to tell him her and Greg were getting a divorce he couldn’t believe what she was saying. He could feel his face grow hot, feel the tears forming in his eyes and making their way down his cheeks. He swiped at them angrily as Elaine put her hand on his knee. He was a university student. A grown man used to heart-ache, so why did this hurt him so much?

 

He had no answer, Elaine had no answer, and while Greg may have had an answer, Grantaire doubted it, and it would have been useless anyway, Greg had moved out the week before taking Elaine’s heart with him.

 

At the end of the holidays Elaine gave him the divorce papers, asking him to take them away from her because she didn’t want to look at them anymore, didn’t want to think about them, so he did.

 

He took them, and he thought about tearing them up, about burning them, but he didn’t want to destroy, he wanted to create. He wanted Greg to not have fallen in love with the woman at his work, wanted him to realise how perfect Elaine was for him, how much she needed him, how much he needed her, how Grantaire needed them together.

 

Greg had visited Grantaire, towards the end of his holiday, trying to explain, saying Grantaire was still welcome in his home, but it was all too much. Grantaire hated it, the way love broke people apart leaving holes gapping in their chests, he didn’t want any more destruction he wanted to create something, the phoenix of belief, rising from the ashes of disillusion.

 

Sitting in his studio at uni, he remembered all the times he had sat with both Elaine and Greg in a similar studio a thousand miles away, a million years ago. Remembered the stories they had told, the jokes they had shared, and suddenly he remembered the dresses.

 

Elaine had once told him of a show in New Zealand called World of Wearable arts, where designers would make clothes out of any material they wanted making walking pieces of art. She had told him how when the show was on, shop owners would create their own dresses out of paper and put them on the mannequins in their store windows. And Grantaire had an idea.

 

He put out ads on the internet, in new papers, on the radio, anywhere he could think of, calling for divorce papers.

 

After about a month of work, collecting the papers, designing, creating, he finally had it, a wedding dress made of divorce papers. He looked at it and couldn’t help but think it wasn’t enough, he had to do something else, something more, something to bring a smile to Elaine’s face. A smile like the one she had worn in her wedding pictures, one she had worn all those nights in the studio, all those trips as a family.

 

He laughed as he remembered the words Elaine had said to him when she told him Greg had divorced her.

 

_‘Don’t let this put you off’ she had said, ‘find someone you love, get married, be happy.’_

Well he couldn’t promise the love, or the happiness, or a true marriage, but he could certainly fake it to bring a smile to Elaines’ face.

 

So with a few adjustments and a call to Courfeyrac, who was the only one of his friends who was crazy enough to go along with Grantaires’ plan without questioning his sanity, he found himself dressed in a wedding dress made of divorce papers, taking pictures with Courfeyrac his ‘groom’.

 

After they were done they sat down to have a beer together and toast to a job well done, Grantaire would send the pictures to Elaine in the morning, he was certain they would make her smile again, even if it was temporary.

 

Grantaire felt like he should have been embarrassed when Enjolras walked in on him drinking bear in a wedding dress made of divorce papers, but as he stammered out “R, what. . ?” Grantaire simply couldn’t bring himself to care at that exact moment.

 

“Don’t ask.” Was all he said before going back to his beer. 

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wanted to go a different way with this, where basically Grantaire was just a cynic and this was him scoffing at the idea of marriage, and I might actually do that one day, but for now this is what happened, though I'm not really sure how. I hope you enjoyed it though. :)


End file.
